Early Career
Petronius Maximus was born in about 396. Although he was of obscure origin, it is now believed that he belonged to the Anicii family. Related to later Emperor Olybrius, Maximus was the son of Anicius Probinus, the son of Anicia Faltonia Proba and Sextus Claudius Petronius Probus, who was Prefect of Illyricum in 364, Prefect of Gaul in 366, Prefect of Italy in 368–375 and again in 383 and consul in 371.
Maximus achieved a remarkable career early in life. His earliest known office was praetor, held about 411; around 415 he served as a tribunus et notarius, which was an entry position to the imperial bureaucracy and led to his serving as Comes sacrarum largitionum (Count of the Sacred Largess) between 416 and 419.
From January/February 420 to August/September 421 he was praefectus urbi of Rome, an office he held again sometime before 439; as praefectus he restored the Old St. Peter's Basilica. He was also appointed praetorian prefect sometime between 421 and 439; it was either while holding this post or during his second urban prefecture that he was appointed consul for the year 433.
From August 439 to February 441 he held the praetorian prefecture of Italy, then a second consulship in 443. Between 443 (the year of his fourth prefecture and second consulship) and 445 (the year he was granted the title of Patrician) Maximus built a forum in Rome, on the Caelian Hill between via Labicana and the Basilica di San Clemente. During this year, he was briefly the most honored of all non-Imperial Romans, until the third consulate of Flavius Aëtius, generalissimo of the Western empire, the following year.
The enmity between Petronius Maximus and the powerful Patricius and magister militum of the West Aëtius clearly led to the events that gradually brought down the Western Roman Empire. Initially however, the principal beneficiary of this was Maximus, who came to the throne as a result of the murders of Aëtius in 454 and of the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III on 16 March 455.
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